Whenever I get on my high horse about the continued support President George W. Bush is getting from the American public, someone pipes up - like they just this very second thought of it - with the startling analysis that President George H.W. Bush was sitting at 90 percent popularity during the Gulf War and then lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton.
By the way, are we all clear on why the current President Bush is called "43" and his dad is called "41"? The father was the 41st President. GWB is the 43rd. Sometimes we forget not everyone knows all the shorthand all the time.
Anyway, the Pew poll shows that "43" is still sitting at 80 percent overall job approval. So what? That's not the best number. The best number comes from the question: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy?"
Bush gets 60% job approval from those polled. And, here's the message to take to your Democratic friends at the coffee klatch this morning: In August of 1990 - about two months before the mid-term elections - "41" was getting only 40% approval on his handling of the economy.
A little more:
- In July of 1994 President Clinton was getting only 38% approval on his handling of the economy. The GOP took control of the House that fall for the first time in 40 years.
- Prior to the mid-term elections of 1998, Clinton was getting a whopping 71% job approval. The GOP lost five seats that fall even though most pundits thought - in the face of the Lewinsky Scandal - the Republicans would gain seats.
All of this, as we have seen before, is subject to change. But as of now, the Democrats have not found the language, the issues, or the personality to force that change.
Speaking of Clinton and Lewinsky, there's more bad news for the Clinton Legacy Patrol. HBO will air a special, March 3, during which Ms. Lewinsky will answer questions before a group of students.
Full disclosure: The Mullmeister's favorite cousin, Lisa Heller, is executive producing the show.
The last thing the Clinton Legacy Support Group wants is for the country to be reminded, not of the 71% approval on his handling of the economy, but rather of his handling of Ms. Lewinsky.
Speaking of scandal, in this week's Time Magazine the goofball who is Congressman Henry Waxman's chief of staff, verbally rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation of a full-blown scandal involving the Bush Administration and Enron. He was quoted as saying, "This is the perfect storm."
According to this Pew poll just about the same percentage of the American public says it is paying close attention to the Enron situation as say they were to the trial of that rink-rage hockey dad in Massachusetts - about 19 percent.
Maybe this is not "the perfect storm" for the House Democrats after all. But Waxman's chief of staff is a perfect fool.
Never one to ignore a call from the media, here is a section of reporter Jenna Heath's Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece on the Enron story:
GOP Strategist Rich Galen said he thinks the Enron story will not do permanent damage to Bush or the White House. "Sooner or later, they're going to run out of legs, and this story will become [a Securities and Exchange Commission] and Justice Department story," said Galen, author of the online political newsletter Mullings.
Am I the only person who thinks it was odd that Ted Kennedy took up the tax-increase cudgel on behalf of the Democrats? Here's what I think: I think that Kennedy is the only Senator who could have forced Daschle to let the Education Bill on the floor.
Kennedy - who has not spent a great deal of time calculating whether his paycheck, after withholding,
left enough to pay the rent - has to carry the tax-increase message as re-payment. Kennedy's not up for re-election,
and Daschle doesn't want to further weaken Senator Tim Johnson who is up for re-election in South Dakota against a strong Republican candidate, Congressman John Thune.
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